You know I don’t actually enjoy blogging about unpaid work,
right? Despite my countless entries on it, I don’t actually get a kick from it.
Well, I do. My love for this job gets a kicking as does my poor and feeble bank
account. But I don’t get a thrill from it, I promise. All I get from it is a
desire to climb up on the roof and scream for the rest of the week. But, yet
again, I find myself blogging about it. I’m sorry but it’s happening. So you
can either look away now or you can come with me on a little brief journey… You
still with me? Excellent, now follow me…
I had no intentions of writing about unpaid work because I
was pretty sure I’d said all I wanted to on the matter. But yesterday, eager to
get started on 2013 and hoping that the castings would start appearing as
everyone gets back to work proper, I practically leapt on the casting websites.
I checked the paid jobs on one particular site and found one measly, grossly
underpaid role to apply for on the woefully meagre list. Cover letter and CV
fired off, I checked the unpaid jobs to see if there were any gems I could
share on Twitter. Despite it being mid-morning, there was already a full page
of unpaid jobs. As the day went on, the unpaid list increased quicker than my
Christmas waistline and I had trouble keeping up with them. At the end of play
(about 5.30pm when casting calls ground to a halt and hopes of a productive and
fruitful day die yet again) there were 15 paid jobs and 51 unpaid jobs. That,
maths fans, means that for every paid job, there are 3.4 unpaid jobs scavenging
around, making everyone feel a bit uneasy. I'm not saying that it's this bad every day but I can say that every single day, the amount of unpaid work will always outnumber paid work. Always.
This is worrying. And it’s no wonder that Spotlight are now
planning a consultation on the matter (if you’re a Spotlight member and are yet
to complete the survey they’re emailing out, please do so. It only takes a
minute or so and is super important.) But the sheer amount of unpaid work out
there is continuing to be a problem. I’m not sure I can say anything new that I
haven’t said before. I personally don’t take on unpaid work anymore but I used
to so I don’t feel like I can be in a position to tell people what they should
and shouldn’t do. I’d like to ask people to stop doing it because while people
happily do it, it will continue. And it’s not just the small independent filmmakers
and students that are the problem (and I’m not saying that none of them pay,
some of them do which is wonderful) but it’s the big, major channels that are
to blame too. Most weeks I’ll see castings posted by terrestrial channels
asking for performers to work for expenses only. This sets a terrible example
and show just how big this problem is. If the major companies aren’t prepared
to pay everyone then you can hardly blame the smaller companies for following
suit.
And it’s not just expenses only work. Yesterday, on the
particular website that gave up the depressing 15/51 statistic, around half of
those jobs weren’t even offering expenses. These were jobs that expected actors
to essentially pay to work just so they could receive a DVD maybe a year later
and perhaps an IMDb credit on a page that no one will ever look at. I’ve even
seen jobs that don’t even offer food for their crew and performers. However
desperate you might be for work, please don’t take on these jobs. If they can’t
even be bothered to make a few sandwiches and buy a few bags of crisps then I
can almost guarantee that the on-set experience won’t be a fun one. But of
course people are still applying for these jobs. The amount of work out there
has decreased to such a depressing level that people just want to be doing
something, anything to confirm to themselves that they are in fact an actor and
not a temp or a call centre worker or whatever other job you find yourself
doing to keep the money-hungry wolves from the door. I desperately need to
update my showreel but I didn’t get any work last year that I’d be able to put
on it. I’m still waiting for a copy of some work I did back in 2011 (chasing
this up has become an almost full-time job) but while I have an out of date
showreel, the jobs are that bit harder to get. So it’s no surprise that people
take on unpaid work just so they can get a bit of material and maybe edge their
way out of this ridiculous catch-22.
Hopefully Spotlight’s findings will bring about change. Or
maybe 2013 will just be another year of me constantly whinging about a problem
that won’t go away. If it’s the latter, I’m sorry. I really am.
